Friday, January 31, 2014
Double Journal Entry Task 1/31
Watch this ShowMe to learn how to complete the Double Journal Entry activity in class today. Use the example in the presentation and your classmates as a resource.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Reading Focus 1/29
As you read today, focus on what type of person the main character or narrator of your book is. Think about his/her personality. How does the author reveal that character's traits?
Answer the following Exit Slip at the end of SSR time today.
Answer the following Exit Slip at the end of SSR time today.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Literature Circle Discussion Roles
Review the Haiku Deck presentation below to review the book discussion roles. Remember, you will rotate roles every week.
Click here to view the Discussion Roles presentation.
Click here to view the Discussion Roles presentation.
Monday, January 20, 2014
WWII Novels (one more time...)
You will be reading one of the following books with a small group for our next domain. Read the book descriptions below carefully. Use the form at the bottom of this post to rank each book based on how much you'd like to read it.
Lexile: 1080 Pages: 304 Genre: Memoir/Diary
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annex" of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
Lexile: 1020 Pages: 368 Genre: Historical Fiction/Suspense
Oct. 11th, 1943-A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun.
When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.
As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?
Lexile: unavailable Pages: 168 Genre: Graphic Novel
***This will be a PAPER book, not an ebook. There will be additional reading with this book.
Told with chilling realism in an unusual comic-book format, this is more than a tale of surviving the Holocaust. Spiegelman relates the effect of those events on the survivors' later years and upon the lives of the following generation. Each scene opens at the elder Spiegelman's home in Rego Park, N.Y. Art, who was born after the war, is visiting his father, Vladek, to record his experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland. The Nazis, portrayed as cats, gradually introduce increasingly repressive measures, until the Jews, drawn as mice, are systematically hunted and herded toward the Final Solution. Vladek saves himself and his wife by a combination of luck and wits, all the time enduring the torment of hunted outcast. The other theme of this book is Art's troubled adjustment to life as he, too, bears the burden of his parents' experiences. This is a complex book.
Lexile: 890 Pages: 304 Genre: Memoir
When World War II began, Irene Gutowna was a 17-year-old Polish nursing student. Six years later, she writes in this inspiring memoir, "I felt a million years old." In the intervening time she was separated from her family, raped by Russian soldiers, and forced to work in a hotel serving German officers. Sickened by the suffering inflicted on the local Jews, Irene began leaving food under the walls of the ghetto. Soon she was scheming to protect the Jewish workers she supervised at the hotel, and then hiding them in the lavish villa where she served as housekeeper to a German major. When he discovered them in the house, Gutowna became his mistress to protect her friends--later escaping him to join the Polish partisans during the Germans' retreat. The author presents her extraordinary heroism as the inevitable result of small steps taken over time, but her readers will not agree as they consume this thrilling adventure story, which also happens to be a drama of moral choice and courage.
Lexile: 720 Pages: 234 Genre: Memoir
In a graphic present-tense narrative, this Holocaust memoir describes what happens to a Jewish girl who is 13 when the Nazis invade Hungary in 1944. She tells of a year of roundups, transports, selections, camps, torture, forced labor, and shootings, then of liberation and the return of a few. For those who have read Leitner's stark The Big Lie (1992), this is a much more detailed account, with the same authority of a personal witness. Horrifying as her experience is, she doesn't dwell on the atrocities. There is hope here. Unlike many adult survivor stories, this does not show the victims losing their humanity. The teenager and her mother help each other survive; they save each other from the gas chambers.
Lexile: 850 Pages: 288 Genre: Science Fiction
***This will be a PAPER book, not an ebook. This book is wonderful, but very challenging.
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
Lexile: 620 Pages: 192 Genre: Historical Fiction/Action
In 1944, as World War II is raging across Europe, fifteen-year-old Jack Raab dreams of being a hero. Leaving New York City, his family, and his boyhood behind, Jack uses a false I.D. and lies his way into the U.S. Air Force.
From their base in England, he and his crew fly twenty-four treacherous bombing missions over occupied Europe. The war is almost over and Hitler near defeat when they fly their last mission -- a mission destined for disaster. Shot down far behind enemy lines, Jack is taken prisoner and sent to a German POW camp, where his experiences are more terrifying than anything he'd ever imagined.
 | |
| The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank |
Lexile: 1080 Pages: 304 Genre: Memoir/Diary
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annex" of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
 |
| Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein |
Oct. 11th, 1943-A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun.
When "Verity" is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn't stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she's living a spy's worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.
As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?
 |
| Maus by Art Spiegelman |
Lexile: unavailable Pages: 168 Genre: Graphic Novel
***This will be a PAPER book, not an ebook. There will be additional reading with this book.
Told with chilling realism in an unusual comic-book format, this is more than a tale of surviving the Holocaust. Spiegelman relates the effect of those events on the survivors' later years and upon the lives of the following generation. Each scene opens at the elder Spiegelman's home in Rego Park, N.Y. Art, who was born after the war, is visiting his father, Vladek, to record his experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland. The Nazis, portrayed as cats, gradually introduce increasingly repressive measures, until the Jews, drawn as mice, are systematically hunted and herded toward the Final Solution. Vladek saves himself and his wife by a combination of luck and wits, all the time enduring the torment of hunted outcast. The other theme of this book is Art's troubled adjustment to life as he, too, bears the burden of his parents' experiences. This is a complex book.
 |
| In My Hands by Irene Opdyke |
When World War II began, Irene Gutowna was a 17-year-old Polish nursing student. Six years later, she writes in this inspiring memoir, "I felt a million years old." In the intervening time she was separated from her family, raped by Russian soldiers, and forced to work in a hotel serving German officers. Sickened by the suffering inflicted on the local Jews, Irene began leaving food under the walls of the ghetto. Soon she was scheming to protect the Jewish workers she supervised at the hotel, and then hiding them in the lavish villa where she served as housekeeper to a German major. When he discovered them in the house, Gutowna became his mistress to protect her friends--later escaping him to join the Polish partisans during the Germans' retreat. The author presents her extraordinary heroism as the inevitable result of small steps taken over time, but her readers will not agree as they consume this thrilling adventure story, which also happens to be a drama of moral choice and courage.
 |
| I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson |
In a graphic present-tense narrative, this Holocaust memoir describes what happens to a Jewish girl who is 13 when the Nazis invade Hungary in 1944. She tells of a year of roundups, transports, selections, camps, torture, forced labor, and shootings, then of liberation and the return of a few. For those who have read Leitner's stark The Big Lie (1992), this is a much more detailed account, with the same authority of a personal witness. Horrifying as her experience is, she doesn't dwell on the atrocities. There is hope here. Unlike many adult survivor stories, this does not show the victims losing their humanity. The teenager and her mother help each other survive; they save each other from the gas chambers.
 |
| Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonneget |
***This will be a PAPER book, not an ebook. This book is wonderful, but very challenging.
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
 |
| The Last Mission by Harry Mazer |
In 1944, as World War II is raging across Europe, fifteen-year-old Jack Raab dreams of being a hero. Leaving New York City, his family, and his boyhood behind, Jack uses a false I.D. and lies his way into the U.S. Air Force.
From their base in England, he and his crew fly twenty-four treacherous bombing missions over occupied Europe. The war is almost over and Hitler near defeat when they fly their last mission -- a mission destined for disaster. Shot down far behind enemy lines, Jack is taken prisoner and sent to a German POW camp, where his experiences are more terrifying than anything he'd ever imagined.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Exit Slip 1/15
Read the following poem. Answer the exit slip question that follows.
A Nation's Strength
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
What makes a nation's pillars high And its foundations strong? What makes it mighty to defy The foes that round it throng? It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand Go down in battle shock; Its shafts are laid on sinking sand, Not on abiding rock. Is it the sword? Ask the red dust Of empires passed away; The blood has turned their stones to rust, Their glory to decay. And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown Has seemed to nations sweet; But God has struck its luster down In ashes at his feet. Not gold but only men can make A people great and strong; Men who for truth and honor's sake Stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep, Who dare while others fly... They build a nation's pillars deep And lift them to the sky.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Exit Slip 1/14
Read this stanza from the poem "The Lighthouse" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and answer the question bellow.
From "The Lighthouse"
Like the great giant Christopher it stands
Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave,
Wading far out among the rocks and sands,
The night o'ertaken mariner to save.
Domain 3 Final Project: Fiction Texts
Choose one of the following literary texts to complete the first part of your Domain 3 final project. You will need to read the whole story in class today. The activities (on the handout) are due by the end of class today.
[Green] The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: A classic story of miscommunication. This is the most famous of O. Henry's stories and is frequently alluded to in other texts. Find the story here.
[Orange] An Hour with Abuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer: The story of a teenage boy coming to terms with his grandfather's illness and his own emotions. Find the story here. Note: The story starts on page 2 and ends on page 4.
[Pink] All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury: A dystopian short story about humans living on Venus. Find the story here. Note: The story starts at page 4 and ends at page 9.
[Green] The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: A classic story of miscommunication. This is the most famous of O. Henry's stories and is frequently alluded to in other texts. Find the story here.
[Orange] An Hour with Abuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer: The story of a teenage boy coming to terms with his grandfather's illness and his own emotions. Find the story here. Note: The story starts on page 2 and ends on page 4.
[Pink] All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury: A dystopian short story about humans living on Venus. Find the story here. Note: The story starts at page 4 and ends at page 9.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Allusions
Feliz Lunes, Octavos! If you completed the Green task on Friday (and actually got it done), follow the directions below for your class work today. Happy learning :)
1) Watch the Flocabulary video about figurative language here. Pay special attention to the definition and examples of allusions.
2) Read the definition and examples of allusions below the Flocabulary video on the same webpage.
3) Explain what at least 6 of the allusion examples on the website mean. You may need to use Google to learn about some of the references. Email me your answers or turn them in on paper.
4) Write your own allusion to explain a concept related to the Great Depression. For example, People who lost their jobs during the Great Depression were like Orpheus, destined to wait hopelessly for their return. Email me or turn in your allusion on paper.
Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad
1) Watch the Flocabulary video about figurative language here. Pay special attention to the definition and examples of allusions.
2) Read the definition and examples of allusions below the Flocabulary video on the same webpage.
3) Explain what at least 6 of the allusion examples on the website mean. You may need to use Google to learn about some of the references. Email me your answers or turn them in on paper.
4) Write your own allusion to explain a concept related to the Great Depression. For example, People who lost their jobs during the Great Depression were like Orpheus, destined to wait hopelessly for their return. Email me or turn in your allusion on paper.
Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Paragraph Structure
Use the image below to develop a "key concept" and write a paragraph about it. What is the main idea of the photo? In your paragraph include at least one sentence explaining what you think the photo is about, one sentence that talks about the people in the photo, and one sentence explains possible reasons for their situation.
Write your paragraph on the class work sheet from today.
Write your paragraph on the class work sheet from today.
Exit Slip 1/9
Read the paragraph below and answer the question that follows.
(1) In 1950, NAACP leaders encouraged seven-year-old Linda Brown and several other African-American students near Topeka, Kansas, to enroll in schools close to their homes. (2) The children were refused admission because of their race, so their parents sued the Topeka Board of Education. (3) The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and signaled a turning point in the fight for equality: the court finally declared segregation of public schools to be illegal. (4) Although the Court's decision was largely ignored in the Southern states, Brown v. Board of Education proved that battles for equality could be won. (5) The fight, however, was far from over.
(1) In 1950, NAACP leaders encouraged seven-year-old Linda Brown and several other African-American students near Topeka, Kansas, to enroll in schools close to their homes. (2) The children were refused admission because of their race, so their parents sued the Topeka Board of Education. (3) The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and signaled a turning point in the fight for equality: the court finally declared segregation of public schools to be illegal. (4) Although the Court's decision was largely ignored in the Southern states, Brown v. Board of Education proved that battles for equality could be won. (5) The fight, however, was far from over.
Identifying Text Structure Types
Click here to view a Haiku Deck presentation that will help you identify types of text structures.
Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad
Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Text Structure Types (RI 5)
Hi Ya'll! Today we're going to explore six different text structure types. These are primarily used to describe nonfiction or informational texts.
1) Use the presentation below to give you an overview of the six types of text structures we're focusing on.
Types of Text Structures
2) Complete the "Group Practice" with your table group members.
3) Check your group's answers.
4) Complete the "Individual Practice" on your own.
1) Use the presentation below to give you an overview of the six types of text structures we're focusing on.
Types of Text Structures
2) Complete the "Group Practice" with your table group members.
3) Check your group's answers.
4) Complete the "Individual Practice" on your own.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Getting Ready for Domain 4
In Domain 4 (starting in 2 weeks), we will be reading books related to World War II and the Holocaust. You will be working in literature circle groups for the whole domain. This is your opportunity to have a say in the book you will read. Use the information at your table and/or google the books on your iPad to make an educated decision. Then, rank the books in the form below.
Comparing Poem Structures (RL 5)
Today we are going to analyze another poem's structure and compare it with the poem "Annabel Lee" that we read yesterday.
1) Use these ShowMe videos if you need to review any of the concepts. (They should work this time!)
Stanzas
Rhyme
Repetition
2) Complete the "Comparing Poem Structures" handout.
3) Answer the Exit Slip question below before you leave today.
4) SSR if you finish early.
1) Use these ShowMe videos if you need to review any of the concepts. (They should work this time!)
Stanzas
Rhyme
Repetition
2) Complete the "Comparing Poem Structures" handout.
3) Answer the Exit Slip question below before you leave today.
4) SSR if you finish early.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Poetry Structure (RL 5)
One of our goals this domain is to be able to compare texts based on their structures. We've discussed plot structure in fiction, today we're going to practice analyzing structures in poetry.
1) Watch these video tutorials on ShowMe to help you understand the three elements of poetry structure that we're looking at today.
Stanzas
Rhyme Scheme
Repetition
2) Complete the analysis of "Annabel Lee"(on the handout). Turn it in by placing it in the folder for your class on your table.
3) Read your SSR book.
4) Answer the Exit Slip question below before the end of class.
1) Watch these video tutorials on ShowMe to help you understand the three elements of poetry structure that we're looking at today.
Stanzas
Rhyme Scheme
Repetition
2) Complete the analysis of "Annabel Lee"(on the handout). Turn it in by placing it in the folder for your class on your table.
3) Read your SSR book.
4) Answer the Exit Slip question below before the end of class.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Happy 2014!
Welcome back, 8th Graders! I hope everyone's holiday break was relaxing and included some fun.
Today as you're reading your independent reading book, play attention to the structure of the story. Before you leave class today, answer the following questions about your book. This is your Think Task for today.
Today as you're reading your independent reading book, play attention to the structure of the story. Before you leave class today, answer the following questions about your book. This is your Think Task for today.
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